Whether it's because I have lived in cities my whole life or because my favorite TV shows are all urban stories, I love running D&D adventures where narrow cobblestone alleys snake through thickets of lamp-lit townhomes.

My players' hunt for an evil wizard through the Free City of Greyhawk was the most fun I've had as a Dungeon Master. If you've always wanted to run a city adventure but feared the preparation would be too much to handle, this article is for you. Running an open-ended sandbox with hundreds of buildings and thousands of NPCs is not as time-consuming as it might seem. The extra upfront work sets up multiple sessions that require no additional preparation, and the immersion of a well-run city campaign can not be found anywhere else.

• Why Run a City Campaign?
• Cities of Renown
• Bringing Your City to Life
• Running City Adventures
• Fast-Track Your City Campaign Prep with Waterdeep

Why Run a City Campaign?

Cities provide people who need heroes. Spend enough time in a city, and the citizens will become the characters' friends, neighbors, and loved ones, raising the stakes for any dangers you present.

Cities also allow your players to encounter every element of your campaign in one place. There are only so many acres characters can cover in 20 levels, but a vast cosmopolitan city draws visitors from every continent, allowing your players to experience all that makes your setting unique. Meanwhile, city laws make it difficult for parties to simply plow through their adventures, killing indiscriminately. If your players have been drifting in that direction, a strong City Watch might be just the deterrent to steer them toward alternate means of problem-solving.

These same laws also allow frequent non-violent interactions with your campaign's main villain. D&D antagonists are too often only encountered once or twice before combat ensues, making the confrontation less impactful than it could have been. Cities allow opportunities to socialize, compete, and develop a deep rivalry with a villain before the final showdown.

Above all, cities encourage roleplaying. If you enjoy creating and playing multiple roles as a Dungeon Master, a city campaign is for you.

Cities of Renown

Below, I've highlighted some cities with the most extensive fifth edition content surrounding them, which can make it easy for DMs to prep a city quickly and effectively. Keep in mind, however, that no matter the amount of content you're provided, you will still have to fill in some details yourself.

Do only as much prep as you need to feel comfortable, and leave the rest to improv on game day. Be sure to write down any improvised shopkeeper's name and general personality for future appearances. One of a city campaign's many joys is to watch neighborhoods fill up with characters to revisit!

Baldur's Gate

Baldur's Gate is a city of crime, death cults, and a stark (and literal) divide between rich and poor. If your favorite comic books are set in Gotham City, Baldur's Gate is the Forgotten Realms city for you. Though the city is described in great detail in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, the book eventually takes players beyond the city and into Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells. That said, the gazetteer of Baldur's Gate can provide plenty to plan a campaign devoted entirely to the cosmopolitan city.

Neverwinter

While Neverwinter is a magical, tolerant, forward-looking city of resilient craftsmen, there are still adventures to be had and conflicts to be resolved. Along with other Forgotten Realms cities, Neverwinter is detailed in the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. Though it's not quite the treatment Baldur's Gate gets in its eponymously named book, it's luckily featured prominently in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Sharn

If you like a city with arcane versions of the amenities of a 21st-century metropolis, Sharn in Eberron: Rising from the Last War is a modern/magical mashup like no other. Beyond the techno-magical aesthetic, Sharn has a distinguishing feature that can make it a unique destination for a city campaign: The city is made of towers that stretch miles into the air. The richest live at the city's top, while the poorest labor in the deepest sections.

Ravnica

Ravnica from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica is a megalopolis that covers a planet, like a high fantasy Coruscant. The city is packed full of tension because of the competing guilds that constantly vie for power. If you're looking for a cultural melting pot, deep lore, and an entire book devoted to the cities' inner workings, this is a great place to start.

Waterdeep

Located just north of the midway point of the Sword Coast in the Forgotten Realms setting, Waterdeep is arguably the most influential city in all of Faerûn. It serves as a cultural, artistic, commercial, and political hub and is ruled over by a council of masked lords. Because of the abundant resources surrounding Waterdeep in fifth edition, it is seen as an idyllic place for those new to city campaigns to cut their teeth, which we go into detail below.

Bringing Your City to Life

The best urban stories earn praise for making the city "a character unto itself." You can do this, too, if you follow a few simple rules. Your players know only what you tell them, so give them the details they need to picture themselves in the city, but not so many that their eyes glaze over. No one plays D&D to sit while walls of text are read to them.

Give your players three to five sentences that conjure up the city's most distinctive features at the start of the session—the verbal equivalent of the establishing shots that introduce a location in a movie. In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a series of images of Neverwinter give us all we need to know. To give your players the same information, you might say something like:

“As smokes rise from Mount Hotenow behind it, the towering spires of Castle Never rise over a grand arena capable of seating tens of thousands, a measure of the multitudes who live behind the thick walls that encircle the city. Past the gates, throngs of people trade handcrafted goods. You can see your breath, and the air feels chilly against your cheeks, but all around you, plants grow miraculously, tended by floating magical constructs. Over your head, aqueducts move steaming water warmed by the volcano throughout the city year-round, earning it the name Neverwinter.”

Like the animated introduction of Game of Thrones reminds viewers of the locations of Westeros, read some version of this to your players every session to reorient them to your setting.

City Subsections

Think up a similar description for each section of your city. Use strong sensory details for maximum immersion, but keep it brief. A good rule of thumb is one visual detail and two that utilize other senses. For example, when the characters enter the Trades Ward in Waterdeep, you might say:

“Green and purple banners hang from fancy oil-burning street lamps as apprentices and customers scurry from workshop to workshop. The smell of fried quipper and chips and the sounds of a street performer tuning his lute for the lunchtime rush fill your senses.”

Repeat a version of this information each time the characters enter the zone, and they will begin to internalize how your city works.

The Word on the Streets

Embrace the opportunities for immersion that only unlimited NPCs provide. Need to relay exposition about the current political climate? An angry soapbox speaker, an official town crier, a radical preacher on the temple steps, and an irreverent comedy troupe could all give their take, and inn patrons and tavern keepers should ask the characters for theirs at every opportunity to help your players discover their characters' thoughts. The voice of a city will emerge from the mouths of its many inhabitants.

Running City Adventures

Once your city is up and running, your players will need things to do there. "You are in Neverwinter. Where do you go?" is too little guidance for even the most self-directed adventurers. Give them a clear goal from the outset to focus their activities. A search, whether for a person or an object, is an excellent first task. It gives the characters a reason to establish connections and explore.

The object of my own players' search was a wizard loyal to Iuz (the son of Graz'zt and Tasha and a main Greyhawk villain.) He had betrayed the characters and entered the city with a new appearance and a wagon full of weapons of mass destruction—glass globes that acted like iron flasks, shattering on impact to release imprisoned demons. The wizard planned to use them during the annual Grand Council to murder city leaders and destroy their offices in the High Quarter.

I designed three locations for this quest: the Thieves' Guild front that gave the wizard his new identity, a safe house for his Iuz-worshipping allies, and finally, the City Watchtower they had infiltrated to lob demons at the Grand Council with a stolen catapult. I stocked these maps like any dungeon, but the players would not have access until they discovered their locations through their urban investigations.

What's a Main Quest Without Side Quests?

Once you have prepared your main quest like any homebrewed adventure, write brief descriptions for six or seven unrelated encounters and key them to the various zones that make up your city. These encounters should take up no more than a play session to resolve. On game day, place the city map on the table and invite the players to investigate the main plot as they wish. Should their travels ever get boring, drop an appropriate side encounter for their location. Examples from my own campaign included a swindler running a magical three-card-monte scam, corrupt Watch officers shaking down local businesses, a pair of captives escaping from a wagon, and a furious druid confronting a merchant for whipping his mules.

After my players had dealt with two such encounters, I would drop a clue that brought them closer to their main goal. Remember to replenish your side encounter list after you use one, so you always have something to spring on your characters wherever they might go.

To encourage roleplaying, reward non-combat solutions to any encounter equally, and always provide tangible rewards lest players get impatient for the main quest. For example, when the characters in my campaign stopped the corrupt city watchmen, a grateful food cart vendor became a trusted informant. When your characters complete the main quest, allow them a session to roam the city at their leisure. Based on what draws their interest, decide on a new main quest and repeat.

Fast-Track Your City Campaign Prep With Waterdeep

If you want a city campaign with the least amount of preparation necessary, pick up Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and its companion volume, Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage. Together, they contain enough content to take a party from 1st to 20th level without stepping outside the city walls.

Begin by running Waterdeep: Dragon Heist as is. It contains the ideal mix of roleplaying and action for an urban campaign and takes the party from 1st to 5th level while also establishing faction connections and providing property in the city.

City of the Mad Mage

You are certainly welcome to run Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage as published, but it's a different sort of adventure—an old-school multilevel dungeon crawl that supposes the party will spend very little time above ground, let alone galivanting around Waterdeep. It might be a jarring change in tone if your players want to continue the city-hopping hijinks they've grown accustomed to.

Fortunately, with a few modifications, you can run Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage while continuing the city-based adventures you've established. One of villain Halaster Blackcloak's goals is to become Open Lord of Waterdeep. Cities can accommodate many genres, so Halaster might try to bribe or blackmail the Masked Lords until he has ones willing to do his bidding, like a villain on Bosch or Perry Mason.

Alternatively, you could take a page from comic books and have him threaten to animate the walking statues to destroy the city if he is not made the Open Lord immediately. The wizard's ghostly former apprentice, Jhesiyra Kestellharp, might warn the adventurers whenever Halaster has a new game afoot.

While the book suggests two-way communication between the party and Kestellharp is impossible, I recommend changing this. Make her a sympathetic pair of eyes inside Undermountain who can guide the characters' efforts. Meanwhile, in this version, Blackcloak is no recluse hiding in his basement. He can make appearances around Waterdeep, gathering allies. A game where the Mad Wizard of Undermountain might appear would be a prized invitation.

Several unused villain factions from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist in the city might prefer Blackcloak as Open Lord to a nosy do-gooder like Laeral Silverhand. The characters can alternate confronting the wizard's schemes in the stately homes and back alleys of Waterdeep, with attempts to find him in Undermountain and stop his schemes once and for all.

Take the Urban Plunge

No setting allows more flexibility in play style or opportunities for fantastical invention than the fantasy city. All DMs should give running one a try. Done right, they add a jolt of wonder to your table like nothing else can. However, urban campaigns require a different approach than preparing and running traditional dungeons. Hopefully, the techniques described above make them more manageable!

Comedian and writer John Roy (@johnroycomic) has appeared on Conan and The Tonight Show and written for Vulture and Dragon Plus. He is the co-host of the comedy/war gaming podcast Legends of the Painty Men. His albums can be found on Apple Music and Spotify. He splits his time between Los Angeles and the Free City of Greyhawk.